As they say, all good things must come to an end. Such is the case for the iPod, the pocketable music player that completely reinvented the music industry. You might be thinking, "Didn't they already discontinue the iPod?" Well, technically no. Today, Apple announced that the iPod Touch—a device that's not quite an iPhone, and should not be mistaken for the iPad mini—is officially being discontinued. The iPod Touch, which launched in 2007, is available while supplies last. “Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV," said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing.
Alongside the rise and demise of Napster, iTunes and the iPod were the easiest way to access digital music throughout most of the '00s. As Steve Jobs would put it, Apple found "the recipe" for digital music. iPods were vessels for those 99-cent singles that iTunes offered, CDs you could burn onto your computer, or pirated music you could download if you were savvy enough to do so. For a while, Apple did have the ideal recipe for digital music—that is, until Spotify came along and revamped the recipe with fresher (and seemingly cheaper) ingredients. What began as "1,000 Songs in Your Pocket" evolved into an overwhelming infinite abyss of music accessible at all time.
There's definitely something sad about saying goodbye to the iPod—it means that the separation of phone and music player is officially a dated concept. Even though I haven't used an iPod in over a decade, increasingly I've longed for that technological separation between the world's turmoil broadcast via up-to-the-minute news outlets and a personal music library curated to ease that anxiety. It felt like a good enough recipe.
